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“Let’s be the first day of school!”
I’m Andrew and I bear a striking resemblance to Glenn Scarpelli.
I’m also flaming and do nothing to hide my obvious gayness. I know what other kids say about me, so why should I hide what I am when they’ll just talk shit about me anyways?
Only one teacher likes me (the spinster music teacher). The rest of the teachers hate me and have no problem making homophobic comments in front of the class.
I’ll befriend a new kid over our mutual love of Pet Shop Boys and never judge him for being closeted. I’ll stay friends with that fat kid until I move to Toronto after graduation.
In 1991 I’ll die of complications due to AIDS. I will be sorely missed by that once-closeted fat boy whose life I changed simply by walking up to him on September 4, 1986 and asking, “Don’t you love the video for ‘West End Girls’‽”
— Sometimes school wasn’t terrible
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10s stay with 2s because, somewhere along the way, there is a complete disruption of the natural gay life progression that changes the end results.
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As I told two old friends:
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“I want my life to be more than just a scrapbook of drunken bitches I no longer talk to.”
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“I’m not a snob. I just don’t want to hang out with people I abhor.”
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Gay bars (and girls invading them):
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The energy was high and the music pumping as the men on the dance floor began swirling around in many different ways. All of a sudden, a slew of high-pitched, ear-shattering Whoo!s was heard as a dozen millenial blonde women slithered their way onto the dance floor. The bar manager walked up to the DJ and gave him a neck-slice sign. The DJ instantly cut off the Donna Summer megamix.
The plethora of sweaty men began clapping and stomping with glares towards the unwanted invaders, who, instantly realizing they were not welcome, turned sheepishly away and left the club.
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Bars used to be fun, and there was a lot more going on than just horrible music played so loud you could feel your testicles vibrating. We went because the bars and clubs had variety. Some were loud dance bars. Some were quiet piano bars. Some were trashy little holes. But it was a lot of everything.
Now they’re all McDonalds:
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the exact same shitty Drag Bingo
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the exact same shitty Drag Brunch
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the exact same horrible music that nobody dances to
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the exact same horrible music amplified everywhere so you can’t have a conversation anyway
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the exact same straight women who take over every bar anyway, so the gay men leave
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bachelorette parties/hen parties that whiny bars claim they can’t stop (bullshit)
I’ve seen more bars die from a lack of trying. They’re the perennial fat boy who is certain that every hot guy will overlook his hundred extra pounds because he got a new haircut or a new shirt. It ain’t happening.
Fix the complete lack of socialization in your damn bars and, ummm, make them social. Quit making them hag hotels. Charge a cover, a really big cover, and create “gay men’s nights” so you waive the cover for gay men. Some guy gets pissy he gets hit on? Oh. Yet another straight guy who slid in because he wanted to hit on the straight women who hang out on there. Yep, leave or pay the cover.
Start having game nights again. Host meetups. Quit being such damn losers about why people are on the apps. They’re on the apps because the bars damn well suck ass. Everyone is tired of trying to talk to somebody in a bar only to yell “Whaaat‽ Whaaat‽” at each other because there’s noplace to talk, and [tired of having] some skank hag constantly inserting herself into every conversation or try to dance with you or your guy.
Solve those problems, we’ll come back. Quit using us like a Vegas slot machine and stop blaming us for your crappy management.
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Gay men are attracted to straight men because in our formative years during the puberty times, who are you checking out? The other guys in your school, the popular boys, the jocks – usually the same ones the teen girls are crushing on. More often than not you are having dreams about the football quarterback and not the president of the drama club. And yes, I know that many of us “settled” for the president of the drama club or someone in choir just so we could have sex with another male in high school, but that didn’t stop us from lusting after Jackson the Lacrosse Stud with his straight-boy swagger and panty-dropping good looks.
While teen girls grow into adult women who become more pragmatic in their choices for partners, that teen boy who lusted after the quarterback never goes away for gay men. It stays with us and affects our choices in who we date and who we partner with for many years. Gay porn tapped into it when we saw a bunch of sites built around the “straight” jock white-boy look. Those sites were such game-changers for gay men that studio porn is almost dead and [they] ushered in a new generation of guys who don’t like labels like straight or gay.
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Here [in Canada], our events are co-opted and turned into straight street festivals.
Maybe straight people think they’re being allies. But a lot of the tactics that were used to suppress us in the ’70s and ’80s, like arresting us for “indecency” (men in leather, the cross-dressers) and the media’s constant obsession with whatever it considers the most excessive and mockable to put on TV so it appears we’re freaks.
Then we get the mommy-stroller brigades who march through and demand that everything they find objectionable so little Haldol and Xanaxia won’t get offended because WON’T SOMEBODY THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN?
We’re being straightwashed – at a gay event. This is regular.
Increasingly, we have completely non-gay groups that hijack the marches entirely, which has happened in Canada as well. They claim to be “queer activists” who have no connection to the gay community, demand the funds raised by the actual groups who have worked all year on these events be turned over to them, and of course, [they demand] they be put in charge or they’ll block the parade in their show of hissyfittism.
This is the kind of shit we’re tired of. It’s why many of us who put up with being bullied in the ’70s and ’80s by straight people and survived AIDS and watched our friends die and our governments ignore us won’t take crap from a bunch of fake-ass “allies” or “queers” who treat us like a straight street festival they get to dictate terms to, blackmail or issue proclamations to.
We were born out of rage against being bullied. Stonewall was just one of many, and it wasn’t a bunch of drag queens in stilettos. It was gay men who’d had all the crap they could take and fought back.
That’s why we don’t need any more lecturing from straight allies.
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We’d organized a hunt, but failed to agree whether a transgendered male could be used instead of a fox.
(Q.v.)